"I Often Wondered," He Said, "Where The Dead Went To.

Now I am glad to know"; and at last acknowledged the whiskey, saying he was sorry to have been caught making the bad stuff.

The behavior of all, even the little ones circled around the fire, was very good. There was no laughter when the strange singing commenced. They only gazed like curious, intelligent animals. A little daughter of the chief with the glow of the firelight on her eyes made an interesting picture, head held aslant. Another in the group, with upturned eyes, seeming to half understand the strange words about God, might have passed for one of Raphael's angels.

The chief's house was about forty feet square, of the ordinary fort kind, but better built and cleaner than usual. The side-room doors were neatly paneled, though all the lumber had been nibbled into shape with a small narrow Indian adze. We had our tent pitched on a grassy spot near the beach, being afraid of wee beasties; which greatly offended Kadachan and old Toyatte, who said, "If this is the way you are to do up at Chilcat, we will be ashamed of you." We promised them to eat Indian food and in every way behave like good Chilcats.

We set out direct for Chilcat in the morning against a brisk head wind. By keeping close inshore and working hard, we made about ten miles by two or three o'clock, when, the tide having turned against us, we could make scarce any headway, and therefore landed in a sheltered cove a few miles up the west side of Lynn Canal. Here I discovered a fine growth of yellow cedar, but none of the trees were very large, the tallest only seventy-five to one hundred feet high. The flat, drooping, plume-like branchlets hang edgewise, giving the trees a thin, open, airy look. Nearly every tree that I saw in a long walk was more or less marked by the knives and axes of the Indians, who use the bark for matting, for covering house-roofs, and making temporary portable huts. For this last purpose sections five or six feet long and two or three wide are pressed flat and secured from warping or splitting by binding them with thin strips of wood at the end. These they carry about with them in their canoes, and in a few minutes they can be put together against slim poles and made into a rainproof hut. Every paddle that I have seen along the coast is made of the light, tough, handsome yellow wood of this tree. It is a tree of moderately rapid growth and usually chooses ground that is rather boggy and mossy. Whether its network of roots makes the bog or not, I am unable as yet to say.

Three glaciers on the opposite side of the canal were in sight, descending nearly to sea-level, and many smaller ones that melt a little below timber-line.

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